


The Consequences of Forgetting to Check Oneself

by CelestialArcadia



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Banter, Crowley's Orange Jacket (Good Omens), Established Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Other, POV Crowley (Good Omens), POV Third Person Limited, Post-Good Omens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29590866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialArcadia/pseuds/CelestialArcadia
Summary: In which Crowley tries to be a menace to society, but mostly succeeds in menacing himself.It's alright, though; even when his schemes backfire, he still has an angel plenty willing to help him out—accompanied by just a bit of scolding.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 44
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens, Unleash The Chaos - Zine Fics and Art





	The Consequences of Forgetting to Check Oneself

**Author's Note:**

> This was my contribution to the Unleash the Chaos zine! It's a great zine, and I highly recommend checking out the rest of the fic and art made for it.

Crowley awakes with a groan. His whole body aches. He’s covered in blood—his own, mostly, though not for lack of trying—and soot and grime and general yuck.

This was not, for the record, how he had intended for things to go. None of his plans had involved violence at all, let alone the type of violence where he was the one being hurt.

“Fuck,” he says, throwing his head back onto the ground. _“Ow.”_

He lays on the ground and stews for a few minutes before attempting to get up. He stays in place a while more before deploying a miracle to keep humans on the street from noticing the injured demon shambling across London, and slowly but surely moves towards the one place in the city he truly considers a home.

  


* * *

  


Crowley throws open the door to the bookshop with as much dramatic panache as he can manage in his state. _“Angel!”_

Not far from the entrance, Aziraphale is standing next to a bewildered, book-bearing middle-aged man. The two of them, distracted from whatever conversation had been happening before Crowley’s sudden appearance, spend a few moments gawking at him.

Crowley looks straight into the man’s eyes. He holds up a hand, grime-covered with a few drops of blood running down, and waves. Throws a too-many-toothed grin in for good measure. “Hi.”

The customer’s expression morphs from confusion to horror as he turns back to Aziraphale.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale asks. Whatever the human had been hoping Aziraphale’s response would be, it didn’t seem to be that.

The man with the book flicks his gaze over from Aziraphale to Crowley and back again. Finally he shivers. “Sorry, sir, I, er, I just remembered I have an important. Uh. Appointment. Task. Thing. Good day and whatnot,” he says as he roughly pushes the book at Aziraphale’s chest.

The man scurries off. He doesn’t shut the door behind him, but it closes anyway.

“Thank you, dear.” Aziraphale smiles. “I wasn’t sure if he’d _ever_ leave. Very stubborn.”

“Enough about him,” Crowley grumbles. He makes a beeline to the couch in the backroom, Aziraphale following close behind, and Crowley plops down unceremoniously. “Help a demon out here, Aziraphale.”

“When you put it that way, I ought to kick you out,” Aziraphale says as he kneels in front of Crowley. He takes a foot and begins unlacing the boot.

“You wouldn’t.”

“No, but I _ought_ to.” Aziraphale takes the boot off, glaring at the mess on it, and now on his floor, before moving to the other foot. “What did you _step_ in, Crowley?”

“You sure you wanna know the answer to that question, angel?”

“Eurgh…no, you have a point. Don’t tell me.” Aziraphale looks down at Crowley’s now-bare feet. They’re spattered with dark scales which contrast with the pale skin surrounding them; one foot has a painful-looking bruise on it that makes Crowley wince when Aziraphale accidentally brushes a thumb across. “You really did get—what’s the phrase—knocked up? If your scales are showing.”

“Knocked _out_. I got knocked out, yes, thanks for reminding me.”

“Do your feet hurt? Besides the bruise.”

“Bit sore, but nothing’s broken. This isn’t the worst they’ve been through.”

Aziraphale looks at Crowley’s feet again, and Crowley gets the distinct impression that Aziraphale is looking not just down but into the past—but the moment soon passes, as does a small miracle, Aziraphale manifesting a bucket and some warm water under Crowley’s legs. (As well as thoroughly cleaning his boots, just so Aziraphale didn’t have to think about _that_ all over his floor.)

Crowley steps gently into the water, to keep from splashing Aziraphale by accident, and lets out a relieved moan that would be obscene in most other contexts. He wiggles his toes a bit and leans back. “You haven’t asked me what I did.”

Aziraphale looks straight into Crowley’s eyes. “Whatever you were trying to do, you clearly didn’t succeed.”

“You wound me, angel.”

“ _Someone_ clearly did.” Aziraphale sighs as he begins to remove Crowley’s jacket.

Crowley feels…small, suddenly. It’s not like the jacket literally made him bigger—it’s just a normal hi-vis jacket, albeit several sizes too big for him—but it makes it easier to affect a larger-than-life personality, to go about causing mischief without considering the risks. (Which, in hindsight, maybe was not the best attitude for him to have taken today. It worked every other time, though. Usually.)

Aziraphale gasps when he removes both sides of the jacket, revealing bruises all over Crowley’s arms, and a gash on his left arm that has only just begun to close up alongside smaller cuts and scrapes.

“There’s more where that came from,” Crowley says, pulling his shirt down just enough to give Aziraphale a brief peek at the large bruise blooming on his chest—he’s trying for levity but not really pulling it off, and Aziraphale just frowns. (Not the reaction Crowley normally expects from a move like that, but then again, he wasn’t basically a walking bruise all those other times.)

“That’s…quite a lot of injuries for one body.”

“Yeah. If it was just any one of these, I’d miracle myself whole. But. Well. Demonic healing can only do so much at once.”

“Are you asking _me_ to heal you?”

“If you’d like,” Crowley responds, in a tone he hopes doesn’t come across as desperate.

“It’ll hurt.”

“Can’t hurt any more than it already does, I don’t think.”

Aziraphale looks Crowley all over, at all the pain he can see and the pain he can’t. “…if you’re sure that’s what you want, Crowley.”

“Yeah,” Crowley says. “Yeah. Please?”

“You can’t say I didn’t warn you.” Aziraphale places a hand on the large cut. “I’ll start here, and stop when this is healed. Then you can decide whether you’d like to keep going.”

“I’ll be fine,” Crowley reassures, as much for his own sake as for Aziraphale’s.

Aziraphale uses his free hand to grab onto Crowley’s. “Hold on, dear. Brace yourself.” Crowley nods, interlacing his own fingers with Aziraphale’s.

When the healing begins, Crowley becomes deeply, acutely aware of how much he has underestimated how painful angelic healing would be for him. It’s a searing pain that feels not unlike his skin is literally being welded together.

But also.

A vast, undefinable wave of… _something_ , some feeling that floods through him totally; it’s not painful, not at all, but makes him feel like he’s drowning in—whatever it is. He gets the distinct notion, in the small part of his mind not focused on the burning pain, that maybe he wouldn’t mind trying _that_ part again without the agony.

It doesn’t take long for the wound to heal—less than a minute, though Crowley would swear on everything bad in the world that it’s longer—and Aziraphale, to his word, stops immediately. Crowley collapses into his lap, exhausted and overwhelmed. Aziraphale pulls Crowley into an embrace—lightly, not putting undue pressure on the bruises still littering Crowley’s body—and oh-so-gently begins rubbing his back.

“Even if you say you want me to continue, I’m not making you go through that again. It’s too much, Crowley, I’m so—”

“I love you too, angel,” Crowley interrupts, to both their surprise.

Aziraphale is still, and Crowley wonders—worries—if he’s misjudged things terribly. But he sighs, then returns to the comforting motions. “I thought it might ease the pain a bit, if I tried mixing love with the healing. But I think it might have been…ah, too much?”

“Was a lot, yeah. But—but it was the pain that was too much, not the love. The love was good, I think.”

“Are you sure? I didn’t temper myself very well.”

“I don’t think you could ever be too much for me. I really don’t.”

“Crowley…” Aziraphale coaxes Crowley’s face away from his middle. Crowley grumbles a bit, but whatever protest he could raise is silenced by Aziraphale’s lips on his own—for just a moment; a sweet, chaste kiss before Aziraphale pulls away, lets Crowley settle again. “Rest up, dear. I’ll prepare a warm bath for you later, if you’d like.”

Crowley nods, and hums quietly. This isn’t how he had intended things to go today, but all things considered, it hasn’t been _so_ bad.


End file.
